Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Friday July 26, 2013 @12:12PM
from the too-young dept.

wiredmikey writes "A shocking and sad day today in the security industry. Well known hacker Barnaby Jack has passed away, sending a shock through the security community. Jack, a famed white hat hacker, was scheduled to present at the Black Hat conference on Tuesday, and present research on vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices. Shocked reactions hit the Twittersphere on Friday, as many in the industry conveyed their condolences, shock, and even disbelief, hoping new of the death was some sort of hoax. 'I just wake up and heard this, really sad, I can't believe this, no words,' Cesar Cerrudo, CTO, IOActive Labs, said in an email to SecurityWeek. Barnaby Jack is probably best known for his ATM hacking demonstrations, which he liked to refer as 'Jackpotting,' and performed at a few conferences, including a demonstration at Black Hat 2010 that got media attention around the world. The San Francisco Medical Examiner's office told Reuters that Jack had died in San Francisco on Thursday, but did not provide additional details."

I disagree. The guy was 34-35. Presumably he didn't get hit by a truck or shot in the head, as you don't need an ME to figure out the basic cause. Do people that age just drop dead? Sure, sometimes, especially if they have known serious health problems. Even if they don't, it can happen (e.g. major aneurysm due to congenital weakness in an artery). It doesn't happen very often though.

I'm no conspiracy theorist and I wouldn't go around screaming ah ha! A little suspicion though, when it happens a few days before a hacker conference, and considering other things that have been happening lately, is another story.

Yes they do. Not often, but it happens. I had "sudden cardiac death". I'm alive because it happened in an emergency room in front of a doctor. They called code, and brought me back. I was 30. I'm still here at 45, 5 bypasses, a defibrillator implant and 8 stents later. The odds increase if you consider this researcher was probably a nerd like most of us, meaning he was probably sedentary most of the time, and probably didn't exactly eat the best stuff for his health.

It could be. Stress. Stress releases cortisol and increases vascular tone through a higher baseline of catecholamines (epinephrine, norepinephrine) which leads to higher blood pressure. This puts more work on the heart since it has to increase its output to compensate for the increased resistance to blood flow. Stress can very well be a factor that causes a catastrophic event like this to happen. Usually when someone dies suddenly, it's a circulatory problem - stroke, heart attack, aneurysm, thrombosis. All of these have increased probabilities of happening when someone is under stress. Yeah, I'm a doctor, too - which is why I got so lucky and was standing in the middle of an ER when it happened to me:)

In the deaths of most young people an autopsy is performed precisely for the reasons you state. Unless the cause of death is readily apparent, most younger people are healthy enough that they do not just fall over dead. The results of the autopsy won't and can't be known for a couple days but there are plenty of non-spectacular causes of death the least of which is drugs or alcohol.

My point is not "There's no way this death COULD have been suspicious."

My point is "The reason a cause of death hasn't been released yet is because an autopsy and subsequent biochemical analysis takes time." There are blood tests to run, arteries to check, stomach contents to evaluate, etc, etc, etc. A lot of that is done by the doctor performing the autopsy, but confirmation takes a little while.

So while I acknowledge that the *death* may or may not turn out to be suspicious, the fact that we don't know th

Fun fact: "tinfoil hats" are, in fact a government conspiracy. Tin does absolutely nothing to deflect the alien mind-control waves the FBI has been using. The widespread usage of the term "tinfoil hat" has been leading people into using ineffective methods. Your hats need to made out of aluminum .

I disagree. The guy was 34-35. Presumably he didn't get hit by a truck or shot in the head, as you don't need an ME to figure out the basic cause. Do people that age just drop dead? Sure, sometimes, especially if they have known serious drug problems.

FTFY...not saying this guy did, but probably most high profile deaths with people his age are due to drug ODs

It doesn't sound suspicious at all if you think about it. It takes an autopsy to determine cause of death, and that takes a few days at least.

Lies. I watch NCIS and know an autopsy only takes the time to ride an elevator to the basement. Of course, the body is usually either clothed, or a bright light is shining upon his nether-regions, which are suspiciously eunich-like... so maybe it only works on aliens mascarading as marines.

But they have exceptional people at NCIS. I've watched Timothy McGee crack a 256 bit symmetrical cipher in an afternoon using just his desktop PC which is especially astonishing given that the way he delivered the line "256 bit symmetrical cipher" strongly implied that he had no clue what a 256 bit symmetrical cipher is.

This is another case of "people are stupid, inobservant lumps who don't understand probability".

This is one data point, nothing to make any assumptions on. If you had perfect knowledge of all the people involved in that hacker conference, and what happened to them in the months leading up to the conference, you'd see all sorts of strange occurrences in their lives that ALSO don't imply nefarious government action.

Remember, this is the country where airline travel decreased by 30% after 9/11. Sure, there

A 50% chance of passing away prior to the start of the gathering and a 50% chance of passing away after the start of the gathering.

That's not how statistics work.The guy was 35 years old and his chances of passing away before the start of Black Hat should have been significantly less than 50%, barring any pre-existing medical conditions or risky behaviors.

Based on misreported deaths -- e.g., John Denver's death by aircraft misreported a week before the actual event -- there is a small (let's be generous, call it 0.1% ) chance that he did not die as of the time of publication by Reuters.

Because of that, his chance of dying after the Black Hat conference is nowhere close to 50%. His chance of dying before the event was less than, but approaches, 100%.

We adjust statistics to reflect known facts and known probabilities. The reports of his death are a known fac

Could I settle this? Not to use your wording but I agree, I was being snotty. You could call it "but-that" if you want. But my point did have to do with staistics, insofar as you need to use the best available data.

That's just the thing here. Banking controls the world right now. We think it is government, but it's pretty much banking and money. As the global financial crisis comes closer to "the end of things" it's getting more and more serious. Now that the people hacking, cracking and exploiting vulnerabilities in money systems and services are becoming heroes to the people, the government can no longer be trusted to handle these people through official means.

You know, I can't say I'm a big fan of the President but that drivel you spout is ridiculous in the extreme. The fantasy world you live in makes Hollywood movies seem realistic. I'd be willing to bet my life that President Obama never ordered anyone to cluster bomb a village filled with women and children. It is possible that the military targeted a site thought to be a terrorist camp and it was filled with women and children. Maybe, but I doubt even that happened. You see, women and children are targ

Like I said, maybe. Collateral damage is not targeting someone. Collateral damage is what happens when a rocket launcher is shooting at you and you shoot back blowing up the launcher and, unfortunately, the people in the neighborhood where the launcher is located. For this reason people usually flee war zones but many times terrorists actually block people from leaving so they can up the likelihood of collateral damage.

A better definition of collateral damage (that matches what the U.S. military and three letter agencies are actually doing) would be something like, "You're sitting in a trailer in Texas, watching a live feed from the UAV you're piloting over Pakistan, when you see a group of young men. Your supervisor tells you they're insurgents and you should kill them. You fire a missile at the group, entirely dismembering every one of them. They were standing next to a woman holding a baby who was walking by. She a

Your definition is also correct. There is no way to fight a war in an occupied city without killing civilians. In the parent's post however he made it sound as if those guys in that trailer were actually targeting the woman with the baby which is stupid. Even absent the wrongness of that it makes no sense even from a practical standpoint because it's a waste of resources to kill those that can't conceivably be a threat. The only way to avoid civilian deaths is to give up and leave. I can say that I thi

Not arguing here (we're all friends here), but look into some of the stories of the remote operators. One told about being ordered to target a dwelling, out of which ran what looked like a "very short person", just before the missile hit. That figure was completely obliterated. The operator asked his spotter for more information about it, and was told, "it was just a dog". It seems as though there's a callous disregard for innocents in these operations, even after you discount the helicopter pilots who

A month ago the idea that the US government was monitoring the entire internet, had access to every major ISPs records and could listen to anyone's phone calls at any time was a joke. Now look where we're at. I'm not saying we have to believe the wildest of conspiracy theories but at this point we have no baseline from which to compare. What the NSA is doing with their spying is so outrageous that I can no longer use common sense to judge if a conspiracy theory about their actions is more or less likely. Ju

"Did you know that the NSA is not only interested in spying, but also funds research in almost every field of university study?... if you would like an application form for an NSA grant, call your mother and ask for one...."

I'd be willing to bet my life that President Obama never ordered anyone to cluster bomb a village filled with women and children. It is possible that the military targeted a site thought to be a terrorist camp and it was filled with women and children.

Yeah, if your second sentence is true, then your first sentence is false.

Not so. An order by the military is not an order from Obama. This may come as a shock, but the the military occasionally acts without Obama's direct knowledge. If the first sentence is true, then Obama said "Bomb this place." The second sentence can happen entirely without that scenario.

I think the point he is trying to make is that there was never an order to bomb a village when it was known that it was filled with women and children, or that the point of the bombing was to kill said women and children.